e blurted out, like
a big schoolboy appalled at his own misdemeanors. "The truth is, Mr.
Keen, that the prospect of actually seeing a 'Carden Girl' alive has
scared me through and through. I've a notion that my business with that
sort of a girl ends when I've drawn her picture."

"But surely," said the Tracer mildly, "you have some natural curiosity
to see the living copy of your charming but inanimate originals, haven't
you, Mr. Carden?"

"Yes--oh, certainly. I'd like to see one of them alive--say out of a
window, or from a cab. I should not care to be too close to her."

"But merely seeing her does not commit you," interposed Mr. Keen,
smiling. "She is far too busy, too much absorbed in her own affairs to
take any notice of you. I understand that she has something of an
aversion for men."

"Aversion!"

"Well, she excludes them as unnecessary to her existence."

"Why?" asked Carden.

"Because she has a mission in life," said Mr. Keen gravely.

Carden looked out of the window. It was pleasant weather--June in all
its early loveliness--the fifth day of June. The sixth was his birthday.

"I've simply got to marry somebody before the day after to-morrow," he
said aloud--"that is, if I want my legacy."

"What!" demanded the Tracer sharply.

Carden turned, pink and guilty. "I didn't tell you all the circumstances
of my case," he said. "I suppose I ought to have done so."

"_Ex_actly," said the Tracer severely. "Why is it necessary that you
marry somebody before the day after to-morrow?"

"Well, it's my twenty-fifth birthday--"

"Somebody has left you money on condition that you marry before your
twenty-fifth birthday? Is that it, Mr. Carden? An uncle? An imbecile
grandfather? A sentimental aunt?"

"My Aunt Tabby Van Beekman."

"Where is she?"

"In Trinity churchyard. It's too late to expostulate with her, you see.
Besides, it wouldn't have done any good when she was alive."

The Tracer knitted his brows, musing, the points of his slim fingers
joined.

"She was very proud, very autocratic," said Carden. "I am the last of
my race and my aunt was determined that the race should not die out with
me. I don't want to marry and increase, but she's trying to make me. At
all events, I am not going to marry any woman inferior to the type I
have created with my pencil--what the public calls the 'Carden Girl.'
And now you see that your discovery of this living type comes rather
late. In two days I must be legall